A Tennessee school district has made the decision to ban Alex Haley’s Roots: The Saga of an American Family over one paragraph.
The district confirmed the decision to Knox News on Thursday (May 14). It joins a list of 118 more books that have been banned over the last two years.
According to district spokesperson Carly Harrington, the removal of Roots wasn’t because of its historical theme, in which it chronicles the story of Haley's ancestor, a slave named Kunta Kinte, and his descendants after being brought to the United States. The removal was based on Chapter 84 of the book, in which a particular passage is deemed "sadomasochistic."
"As a district, we recognize the immense cultural and historical significance of Alex Haley’s Roots to our nation, to Tennessee, and particularly to the county seat of Knoxville," Harrington said in a statement. "The decision made to remove Roots from school libraries is in no way a commentary on the literary or cultural value of the novel, but the result of adherence to state law."
In removing the book, officials pointed to Tennessee's 2022 Age-Appropriate Materials Act as the basis for its decision. According to a spokesperson, the committee’s decision was strictly based on whether the work was age-appropriate. "Broader themes or historical significance of a work as a whole is not a consideration under the law," Harrington added.
As for what led to it being banned, the district spokesperson revealed that the district doesn’t "track or document the original source" of complaints. The book was previously reported to the book-banning committee to be reviewed, but it wasn’t banned at the time.
The committee’s decision means that material from the book can still be taught in class, it just can’t be placed on library shelves.
Roots was published in 1976, and Haley won a Pulitzer Prize in the Special Citations and Awards category. The novel also inspired a popular TV adaptation in 1977.
Haley’s grandson, Bill, who co-founded the Inherited Roots Project organization, called the decision "incredibly short-sighted and without merit."
"My grandfather famously said: 'I think one of the most fascinating things you can do after you learn about your own people is to study something about the history and culture of other people,'" Bill Haley said in a statement.
"If a book like Roots depicting my family's multigenerational journey through our nation's uncomfortable history of slavery may be offensive to some readers, then why not ban another American classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which some readers may find offensive?"
